Today is the 55th Anniversary of the
premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major. The piece was written for Shostakovich’s son,
Maxim, who premiered the concerto as his graduation exercise from the Moscow
Conservatory. Maxim certainly got a
great gift from his old man, since the concerto shows off both the technical prowess
and emotional depth of the performer.
Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in
1906. Receiving instruction from his
mother at an early age, Shostakovich’s talent was immediately apparent; and he
was a prodigy as both a pianist and a composer.
The young Shostakovich was only eleven when the Russian Revolution swept
in (many musicians, such as Rachmaninoff fled the country). Two years later, he was admitted to the
Petrograd Conservatory, where his progress was monitored by Glazunov. His countrymen, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, had
a profound effect on his compositional style, and he also deeply influenced by
the symphonies of Gustav Mahler.
Through the 1920s, Shostakovich’s fame as a composer spread,
both in Russia and through the world. He
began composing symphonies and opera.
During this time he worked for a Soviet youth theater (since he did very
little work there, it has been assumed that the position shielded Shostakovich
from Soviet authorities.) Under the
regime of Stalin, all aspects of life in the USSR were controlled by the state,
including the arts. Twice in his career,
Shostakovich was officially denounced by the government and his activities
severely curtailed, the first time in 1936.
Many of his colleagues, friends and family were arrested and murdered
during Stalin’s horrible purges of the 1930s.
Shostakovich, although officially out of favor, continued to compose;
and his Seventh Symphony written in 1942 to mark the Soviet resistance to
Hitler’s invasion, restored him to favor with the government and became an
international symbol after it was performed in the besieged city of Leningrad
(there was a famous row between the celebrated conductors Leopold Stokowski and
Arturo Toscanini over its American premiere.)
After the war, Shostakovich was again denounced,
although life got better after Stalin’s death in 1953. The tortured history of Shostakovich and the
Soviet government has been the subject of historians, biographers and filmmakers. The Soviets began to improve its relations
with creative artists, to the point where Shostakovich joined the Communist
Party, although heavy pressure was applied on him (his son, Maxim, would recall
his father weeping over the decision and declaring that he had been “blackmailed
into joining.”
Perhaps the best indicator of Shostakovich’s feelings
was his Fifth Symphony, written in the 1930s after his denunciation. Premiered in Leningrad on November 21, 1937,
it was widely hailed. As one commentator
noted, “many in the Leningrad audience had lost family or friends to the mass
executions. The Fifth drove many to tears and welling emotions. Later
Shostakovich wrote in his memoirs: "I'll never believe that a man who
understood nothing could feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood,
they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the
Fifth was about." Here is a clip of
the fourth movement of that symphony.
The intensity of the beginning section, followed by a softer middle
section which begins with unease and ends with hope, is followed by the
triumphant final section, in which the soaring of the human spirit is vividly
and movingly displayed. It’s not hard to
see why the audiences were moved to tears.
Shostakovich’s health began to suffer in the 1960s and
70s (he was a heavy smoker and consumer of vodka). He was diagnosed with polio and suffered
several heart attacks. In the end, it
was lung cancer that killed him in 1975.
The Second Piano Concerto, written for his son, was
also taken up by his pianist grandson (also named Dmitri); so you have three generations represented (grandfather - composer, son- conductor, grandson - pianist). The version I have for you today features the composer himself as pianist with the Orchestre National De La Radiodiffusion Francaise, conducted by Andre Cluytens. Although Shostakovich later dismissed his concerto as "having little artistic merit", history has not concurred. You may recognize the first movement for a reason I'll divulge at the end. You would be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful adagio for piano and orchestra the second movement of this concerto. An ebullient third movement brings the piece to an end.
Movement 1:
Movement 2:
Movement 3:
In 2000, the first movement of this concerto was used in Disney's Fantasia 2000 as the basis for the story of "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." Here's the clip.
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